Mercury Bay Golf Club

Overview: Mercury Bay Golf Club is the local 18-hole course for Whitianga and the Coromandel’s eastern beaches. The layout is set in a landscape shaped by coastal weather, low vegetation and the practical needs of a community course. Its appeal is less about manufactured resort drama than about playing a relaxed round close to Mercury Bay, with enough fairway movement and tree cover to reward sensible positioning.

History: The club story began at a public meeting on 1 June 1932, when members marked nine fairways and greens on waterfront land. The course moved to a dairy farm in 1945, to Kaimarama in 1950 and back toward town before members bought the land where the front nine now sits. That nine was in play by 1960, and the purchase of land for the back nine allowed the course to become 18 holes after further development in 1984.

Did You Know? The club’s earliest local rules allowed relief from wheel tracks, hoof marks, pig rooting and a bone heap, while shell pits, swamps and ditches carried penalties. Those rules show how closely the first course was tied to working farmland around Whitianga.